The art of printing with rendering devices, such as laser or other printers, is relatively well known. In general, printing results by processing a print job, typically in the well known form of a printer description language (PDL), to create bitmaps that are sent to printing mechanisms to obtain hard copy outputs. Among other things, the PDL specifies a raster operation function describing how to apply pixel coloring for to-be-printed objects of the print job. Often, this function embodies a math or logic function as a Boolean expression, for example, when the PDL is of PCL language type or an algebraic expression for PDF languages. As is known, a PCL language has 256 possible logic functions while a PDF language has 16 math functions. In any raster operation function, however, sometimes the function includes a multiplicity of variables including, but not limited to, a destination variable, a to-be-printed object variable and/or an ink or coloring variable. Yet, the more variables a function has, the more processing and more memory required therefor. Accordingly, a need exists in the printing arts for achieving optimization of raster operation functions, especially for minimizing processing and memory requirements.
Appreciating that print jobs often have a multiplicity of to-be-printed objects, each with their own raster operation function, a further need exists in the printing arts to represent multiple objects in a manner that minimizes processing and memory requirements.